On Thursday, during the discussion of the Colonial vote, Sir
Charles Dilke returned to the question of the administra- tion of Colonial dependencies by the Foreign Office, and again urged that the African protectorates should be placed under the Colonial Office. Mr. Chamberlain replied that, though he was credited with "some personal ambition, at the present moment he did not desire any new world to conquer.' The answer was a very natural one ; but we trust that at ita leisure the Cabinet will seriously consider whether it would not be to the public advantage to relieve the Foreign Office of administrative work, and concentrate its attention on the very different, though even more important, work of foreign relations. Depend upon it, an Office harassed with the com- paratively petty problems of providing a currency suitable to naked, and perhaps cannibal, savages, or the best gauge for a railway through tropical swamps, will not be so attentive as it should be to matters of high policy. If the Foreign Office had not been so busy with admini- stration, it might have remembered that in making the Congo treaty it was deeply wounding the susceptibilities of Germany. Mr. Chamberlain's speech was further notice- able for a very interesting statement of the policy— in our view a sound one—which he means to adopt towards the tropical Colonies. "I regard," he said, "many of our Colonies as being in the condition of undeveloped estates, and estates which can never be developed without Imperial
assistance I shall be prepared to consider very care- fully myself, and then, if I am satisfied, to confidently submit to the House, any case which may occur in which by the judicious investment of British money those estates which belong to the British Crown may be developed for the benefit of their population and for the benefit of the greater popula- tion which is outside."
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